


in ,41c., 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




QQQOSOfiOHTE 



mm 

















.♦ *P. A'' 

h.** ■<?*r. C^ ♦ 



■> =--^^^' . 












■jr> 














0^ 0°/-'^ 





























' N O 4 



'• % .A^ 









^ " o » « * . -^J^ O^ *■,, 























.>/"'°\<....% *•■••/ .^"^' """'v^*^ 



1 .nk- C» -~'^tliJ''^'^ 












• • * ^v 






. o 






,y 



^^> -w. 






A 



A 



, » « o,, 





o » o 



,.^^ 



• Or .j! 

lO. 




TO 


1 

GEORGE BAN CROFT, 


SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, 


i THE 


TRADICER AND EILOGIST 

OF 


♦ GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON. 


WASHINGTON. 
1846. 



■3%Hz 



TO THE PUBLIC. 

It is thought best, as a suitable method of informing the people generally of the 
character of the present Secretary of the Navy, to republish in pamphlet form 
three numbers which have appeared in the Baltimore Patriot, addressed to that 
conspicious functionary. The facts asserted in those papers will be found, upon 
investigation, to be susceptible of the clearest proof. 

Washington, March 12, 1846. 



TO 



GEORGE BANCROFT, 

Secretary of the N'avjj, and '■'■the historian of his country. ^^ 



[No. 1.] 
Sir: 

. An old co-laborer of yours in the Whig cause designs to address you 
occasionally upon sundry subjects, which may prove to be of some concern- 
ment to the public. I need not inform you wbo I am, further than to state 
that a baker's dozen of years ago you and I were members of Massachusetts 
whig Conventions, denouncing General Jackson and his Administration as 
cordially and as ardently as one of your present political friends, who, on a 
recent solemn occasion exclaimed to you in the presence of many high func- 
tionaries, '■'•Bancroft, yoiCr a d d humhvgV once predicted that Jack- 
son's election to the Presidency vrould prove " a curse to the country." 

Ever since the lime I allude to, when we were attendini:;- Whis: conven- 
tions together,! have remained a Whig: ?/o?^ have not. Do you know that I 
then had mj^ doubts as to your political honesty? Do you know that I thought 
your terrible denunciations of the Jackson Administration were of a mechanical 
nature, with polished exterior but void of heart and s('ul,and made up and 
dealt forth with ulterior views? Do you know that when I some tiuie since 
read your Jackson Eulogy, I thouglit it very prettily executed and varnished, 
but was forcibly reminded that it contained no more heart or soul than did 
yorn- old denunciations of the same distinguished individual? 

You will recollect that, not long after the promulgation of those denuncia- 
tions, the cloven foot was exhibited in your vehement aspirations which you 
could not, or did noi choose to, conceal, to get nominated for (congress by 
the Whig Con\ention of the District in which you resided ! That Conven- 
tion knew that you were mjpopular, on account of your ridiculously assumed 
aristocratic manners, and that your claims to such a nomination were of 
"no account," and hence you were not nominated. You were deeply offend- 
ed — you meditated desertion — and you gave out hints of that ilk! The 
Boston Atlas saw your bent, and without giving you time to desert, fairly 
lashed you out of the Whig ranks and into those of Locofocoism ! In time you 
were made Collector of the Port of Boston — and a better party tool Van Bu- 
renism perhaps never before had found. While Collector you were appoint- 
ed, by the Secretary of the Treasury, one of the Commissioners to Superin- 
tend the erection of the new Custom-house at Boston, and expressly informed 
you that for this service no compensation would be allowed to the Collector. 



Your predecessor, Mr. Hensliaw,had neither charged nor received compen- 
sation for the same service. Nevertheless after the election of Gen. Harri- 
son to the Presidenc}-, and the appointment of Levi Lincoln as Collector of 
of Boston, )'ou claimed and finally obtained compensation as Connnissioner, 
in addition to what you received as Collector. The books of the Treasury 
Department show this. » 

I come now. Sir, to an examination of sundry points in your course since 
you have been at the head of the Navy Department. Some of your news- 
paper friends, who seem to know pretty well when, where and whom to 
flatter, have been attempting to manufacture credit for you, on the score of 
economy, for having removed Gen. McNeill from the Brooklyn Establish- 
ment, whose salary was $;4U0O. liCt us see. Mr. Sanger was placed at the 
head of the work at a salary of $31)00. But soon after this, at tlie earnest 
representations of the Van Buren, Wright and Butler clique, that [x politician 
must be appointed to that station, as the only means of carrying the District, 
and in obedience to a visit from ex- Congressman Murphy and others, to the 
sam^purport and for the same object, did 3^ou not order Sanger off to Pensa- 
cola and appoint Mr. McAlpin, the politician, to the station ? Did not Sanger 
proceed to Washington and while remaining there, w^as it not ascertained 
that McAlpin was not competent to superintend the work ? Was not Sanger 
thereupon sent back to Brooklyn at his former salary of !j^3000, and McAlpin 
appointed his assistant at a salary of ^2500 ? Call you this economy ? 

Another illustration of your economy, Sir, will be found in the manner in 
which your eminenl p)'acticalknouiledg'e has caused the steamer Ti'^'a^er Witch 
to be operated upon. That little craft, as is well known, was built at the Wash- 
ington yard, of iron, on Hunter's Plan, for a Tank to take water from the Dis- 
mal Swamp to national vessels going to sea, and to tow vessels from Hampton 
Roads up^ to the Navy Yard at Norfolk or elsewhere. For this last service she 
was found to possess adequate power, but drew too much water when ful- 
ly freighted, to come out of the Canal. This, as you know, or might know, 
could have been easily remedied by means of a suction-pipe. But no, the De- 
partment must needs proceed on a more splendid scale of economy! Lieut. 
Hunter had been a little tinctured with Tylcrisjn ! He nuist be hit, and Capt. 
Loper, his rival in propellers, nuist be exalted! Thought you not so, Mr, 
Secretary? At all hazards, the Water Witch \WiX.s doomed to exchange pro- 
pellers ! An estimate was made, and Capt. Loper thought the thing could be 
done for ,^9,000. She was sent to Philadephia, where forty feet were added 
to her length, and a Loper propeller put on her, at an expense of ;I^17,000. 
Officers were then put on board of her, and she was ordered to Norfolk ! 
She arrived at that port, and, as you know, the officer in command reported 
hex uiffit for service ! The officers have been transferred to i\\e Phoenix^ 
and the Water Witch is laid up ! Oh, Economy ! thy personification is 
named George Bancroft! 

Sir, shall I allude to your treatment of Dr. Brown, the Chief Clerk of the 
Department during the first part of your Secretaryship? You wanted 
another man in his place, and you knew very well how to treat so high-min- 
ded and sensitive a gentleman, as the readiest means of effecting his resig- 
nation. He did resign. Yoiu' favorite not being ready for the place, you 
appointed Mr. Homans Acting Chief Clerk. For this you where laughed 
at, as Mr. Homans was a Whig! Did you not, after ascertaining this fact, 
take ^300 from Mr. Homans' salary, and add the same amount to that of 



Mr. Ames, who had accideiitally proclaimed publicly that " George Ban- 
croft was the greatest man extant '\? Did you not decline recognizing or 
speaking to Dr. Brown ? and in reply to a civil question from him, as to the 
cause of the change in your bearing, did you not, in your own peculiar man- 
ner, observe that you had die right to choose your own acquaintances ?) Mr. 
Homans has a family ; Mr. Ames is a single man. I make mention of these 
little things because the man 1 address can sometimes stoop to them. 

And now, Sir, I will allude to another matter. It relates to the dismissal 
and the appointment of a Purser in the Navy. Is there not in Washington 
a gendeman formerly from die West, who is an applicant for a Purseiship 
in the Navy, and who is strongly recommended by Western gentlemen? 
And has not that applicant been j^rojuised the first vacancy that occurred in 
the Purserships ? And yet, have not you and your present Chief Clerk all die 
time been willing to set this Western applicant's claims aside, in favor of a 
citizen of Maine? If not, why did you inform President Polk, when you 
recently visited him to get the Maine gentleman appointed to the vacancy 
just created by the abrupt dismissal of Purser Jolin N. Todd, tliat there 
was no applicant from the West for a Pursership ? And why were this same 
Western applicant's papers ticice displaced or put out of die way, so that 
the President might be deceived upon the subject? Is not the President 
dissatisfied about the matter? If not, why is not the new appointment ofii- 
cially announced? 

Sir, you are in bad odor! The President is said to suspect you, and the 
official editor, no doubt, was more in earnest than he now pretends, when 
he proclaimed that you were a " humbug." 

And now allow me to close this number of the series of papers which I 
contemplate addressing to you at my leisure, by assuring you that a Locofo- 
co Senator of the United Slates recently passed through Baltimore, who 
does not love you by any means. To a friend, that Senator emphaUcally 
re-marked, that you were not even fit to be a Schoolmaster; that you lacked 
veracit}- ; that you had told him one or two stories a short lime ago ; and, 
finally, said he, " Sir, the Navy will suffer very much just so long as Mr. 
Bancroft is at the head of it. Congress can place no confidence in his pro- 
jects or suggestions- " 

NORTHAMPTON. 



[ No. 2. ] 

Sir:. After considerable delay, I resume my attentions to you. I make no 
apology for so doing. You are a public man, at the head of one of the 
People's most honorable offices, and have essa}- ed to make yourself, if not 
popular, at least conspicuous. I, therefore, as a freeman, claim the right to 
scrutinize your acts. You profess to be a modern " democrat," the friend of 
econoyny and retrenchment in the adminstration of the Government, and of 
equal rights and fair dealing as between mian and man ! As a Whig, Sir, I 
shall endeavor to exhibit, in very plain and direct ternis, how well your acts 
square with your professions ! 

That you are learned man, if not indeed what your friend Marcus Mar- 
ton avers that C. C. Hazeivell called you, to wit, " a learned monkey ^ " I 
have no disposition to deny. You have been a hard student. You have been, 



and no doubt still are, ambitious to be known to tlie world as a great reader 
and an author of celebrity. For this^;er ^e I respect you. As nuich as 
any one, I honor tlie aiistocracy of talent, when bent in an honest direction. 

But, Sir, have your talents been bent in such a direction ? While yet a 
young man, you sighed to leave the schoolastic shades which encompassed 
you, and to become a poHtician. You were a Federalist. You turned 
Whig. Tiien having become soured from what you deemed neglect, you 
turned towards political anlimasonry ! Next you became a half-and-half 
Abolitionist and Locofoco. And there, having obtained your reward, in the 
honors and emoluments of the best office in New England — the Boston Col- 
lectorship — you have remained, with occasional spasmodic efibrts to shake 
off your quasi abolitionism ! 

You had commenced writing the history of your country. The com- 
mencement was highly credital)le. What you wrote concerning the cele- 
brated Charter of Rhode Island was conceived in wisdom and impartiality, 
and received the approbation of all candid readers. At the time you penned 
the passages, it is presumed, you saw no prospective inducements to veer 
from the high and honorable thoroughfare of truth. But, Sir, the tide in 
the affairs of "modern democracy" took a sudden turn. The infamous 
Dorr rebellion heaved itself up from the bottom of iniquity to its surface, 
and the party to which you had attached yourself made common cause 
with it. The friends of law and order quoted you and your history, as 
liocofoco authority for denouncinsr the rebellionists! What followed? In 
a new edition of your work, you qualified, explained, recanted and took 
back what you had honestly written, and thereby fortified yourself against 
all attempts to read you out of your party, for that one honest act of your 
life! Benjamin F. Butler, who desired so ardendy the stated preaching of 
the gospel at Sandy Hill, changed his official opinion, as Attorney General 
of the United States, in regard to the location of the Washington terminus 
of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, to meet the wishes, and in compliance 
with the re<juest of General Jackson. You changed your historij of the 
Rhode Island Charter to conform to the progressive views of the advocates 
of Dorrisni ! 

Sir, you were, by a curious combination of circumstances, made Secre- 
tary of the American Navy! And how, in that capacity, have you demean- 
ed yourself! You had heard, unquestionably, that there were abuses in 
that right-arm of the national defence, and far be it from me to denounce 
an honest ambition to olitain public cdat by attempts to correct those abuses I 

But, Sir, how and by whom should such a step be taken? Modestly, by 
one who had first made himself a complete master of the defects in and the 
wants of the Navy? Or abruptly, by a verdant gentleman fresh from his 
books, with but a limited knowledge of human nature, and the most super- 
ficial acquaintance imaginable with the true character of that Navy? 
Should love of Patriotism or hatred of Tylerism govern a Secretary in 
matters of so grave a nature? 

Sir, I shall lake the liberty to allude in this communication, as I allud- 
ed in the former one. which it gave me pleasure to address to you, to some 
of your little acts^ by way of burnishers to your character " in the ab- 
stract." You cannot have forgotten one of the first acts you performed on 
assuming the high responsibilities of your present station. You found a 
portrait of John Tyler hanging up in the Secretary's Room of the Navy 



Deptirtment. You ordered the Messenger to lake it out, and to put Mr. 
Van Bineu's in its place. This was done. Tlie splenetic and u)tQ;ratcful 
act — though Heaven knows John Tyler deserved the treatment he received, 
but not at tiie hands of .Tames K. Polk and those whom his election exalted 
— got ihto the newspapers. Mr. Ritchie, of the " Union," called to see you 
on the subject and to gather materials for a contradiction of the statement! 
Sir, did you not take the innocent old gentleman into the room of your 
chief clerk, and, pointing to Tyler's picture, say " there, you see / had it 
hung up ill the most conspicuous place here^ where there was another pic- 
ture of Mr. Tyler already! Instead of one portrait, here are two of him!" 
And is it not the trutli that you never ordered, or directed, Mr. Tyler's por- 
trait that hung in your room to be placed in that of the chief clerk? Is it 
woitrue that Mr. Brown, who was then the chief clerk, seeing the said por- 
trait turned down in the ante-room, where the Messenger had placed it, took 
the picture, of his oxen volition, and hung it up in the room which he occu- 
pied ? 

Sir, truth is an element which will bear the man onward and upward who 
implicitly stands by it. A resort to falsehood, direct or implied — there being 
no essential difference between the suggcstio falsi and the suppi'essio veri — 
loses to any uian the confidence of his fellow men. Mr. Ritchie, on a sub- 
sequent, solemn occasion — or which was designed and planned to be solemn 
— and when his air, manner and words contrasted shockingly. with the put- 
on habiliments of mourning all about him, gave you, as you remember, that 

characteristic salutation, '■'■Ah, Bancroft, yoii'r a d d hunibiigP^ He 

may have meant more than his words, at the moment, seemed to imply. 
You had humbugged him about Tyler's picture, and caused him to parade 
in his paper a denial of a charge that was true — and you knew it! 

Sir, what next did you do to distinguish yourself as a Secretary of the 
Navy? You had doubtless heard and read of severities in the service, of 
abuses, and of suggestions of reform, and no doubt conceived the idea of at 
once exalting yourself in the annals of fame by a grand attempt to correct 
those abuses and at the same time to make a display of your newly acquired 
power ! 

Luckily, or othenvise, the case of Capt. Voorhees presented itself. A 
Norfolk paper, of your politics, harped severely upon it. The United States 
Journal, then your eulogist, did (he same. A son of Francis P. Blair, who 
was an oflicer on board of the Congress, had an interview with you, either 
by your seeking or his own, and denounced Capt. Voorhees, his command- 
ing officer, in immeasured terms. You ordered that the Captain should be 
tried by a Court Martial. You named the officers to compose the Court. 
The occasion enabled you to give a very lucrative business and some promi- 
nence to Benj. F. Hallett, of Boston, a turncoat political adventurer, like 
yourself, who was balancing between the two factions of your party in Mas- 
sachusetts and coveted at the time by both, which no doubt resulted in bind- 
ing him most firmly to your fortunes — until he can do better by attaching 
himself to some one else! You appointed him Judge Advocate. 

The law requires the Department, when it directs an officer to be court- 
martialed, to make out all the charges and specifications it has against him, 
and furnish him with a copy of the same. Sir, what was your conduct 
in this whole business ? You had Capt. Voorhees tried — and the trial was 



a long one — upon charges preferred against him for his conduct in (he river 
La Plata, in disavowing the blockade of Montevideo which Commodore 
Turner, who commanded the squadron to which the Congress belonged, had 
recognized. While this trial was going on, did you not send for young 
Blair, or go to him, knowing that he was vindictive towards Capt. Voorhees, 
and obtain from him information with a view to have your victim tried by 
a second Court Martial, which would greatly protract Mr. Hallett's lucrative 
employment as Judge Advocate, and not materially economise the public 
expenditures! 

Did you not, while the first court martial was going on, and feeling, for 
the time, that to try a man twice in this manner would not be law but jjer- 
secution^^Tp])\y to Mr. Hallett to ask Capt. Voorhees' consent to be tried up- 
on some chaiges, in relation to taking the Congress to Annapolis before re- 
pairing to Norfolk, which you knew that Commodores Stewart and Ridgely, 
on the first court, would have thrown out if offered ? 

Did you not order a second Court Martial, leaving out Commodores 
Stewart and Ridgely, and naming Commodore Downes as its President, to 
try Captain Voorhees upon charges within your knowledge before the first 
court was held ? And why, after you had testified under oath before the 
second court, as to the time of your knowledge of the various charges against 
the accused, and Mr. Blair was called upon (o state at ii-Ji.at time he held a 
particular conversation with you relative to Capt. Voorhees' conduct, why 
did die Judge Advocate of your appointing so pertinaciously object to the 
interrogatory and ask if it had been put to elicit from the witness's testimony 
a contradiction of that which you had previously given? There was some- 
thing in this matter tliat looked squally for your reputation. It looked as if 
the Judge Advocate, out of good will for the man who had given him the 
place he filled, and (he court, out of respect for the head of the Navy, felt 
bound to screen you! 

Well, sir, the second Court Martial at length got through with its arduous 
labors, and its judgment was, Uiat Capt. Philip F. Voorhees "6e suspend- 
ed for the term of eighteen months.-'' The gallant Captain had now 
been tried a second time, to suit the arbitrary and illegal direction of the 
Department. He had been tried by his peers who had carefidly examined, 
during the twenty days the Court was in session, all the charges against him 
and all the evidence in the case. The verdict was deliberately made up 
and rendered upon the high honors of the officers who composed the court. 
^Severe as it was, for the trifling, insignificant, trumped-up charges against 
the accused, it should have been final. But you willed that it should be 
'Otherwise. Like your ancient prototype as drawn by Shakspeare, in die 
Merchant of Venice, you exclaimed, "/ am Sir Oracle, and when I ope 
Q7iy lips, let no dog bark /" You complained of the sentence of the court — 
a court of your own selection, with a President named by yourself and 
known to be opposed to the accused — and declared that the punishment, 
awarded to Captain Voorhees by his peers, by old and experienced oflicers 
■of the Navy who ouglii to know die laws and discipline in relation thereto, 
was "inadequate," 

Yes, Sir, you, a mere stripling in knowledge of the naval service, just from 
your books, and but three months in the Department, had the unblush- 
ing presumption to dictate to such oflicers in the Navy as Downes, Cas- 



SIN, Ballard, Kearney, Storer, Geisinger, McCauley, Stringham 
and Forrest in the matter of trying and sentencing by Court Martial a 
Captain in the Navy! One is amazed at your audacity ! Nor does any 
thing short of amazement follow the painful intelligence, that the Court, in- 
stead of proudly rebuking your unequalled presumption and condemning 
your illegal and unprecedented persecution of a gallant officer for a trifling 
error of judgment, obediently followed your dictation! I say this of that. 
" Court of Honor " in sorrow. You ordered the court to re-assemble, not 
at Coleman's, in Washington, wdiere it and the former Court had been held, 
but on board the North Carolina, at New York, for the purpose of revising 
its decision. It did re-assemble, and, without passing a shade of rebuke 
upon the arrogance of power, that would make said Court eat its own de- 
cision, it recalled its former sentence, which so much displeased you, Sir, 
and then sentenced Ca])tain Voorhees '■'■to be dismissed fro7ii the Navy of' 
the United States.''^ As a* sort of salvo, the Court recommended the ac- 
cused to the mitigating power of the Executive, on account of his past valu- 
able services to his country, and his integrity of character — and the Presi- 
dent thereupon changed the sentence to susjjension of duty, without pay 
or emolument, for five years ! 

Sir, when before has there occurred such a disgraceful and scandalous 
proceeding? If this concentration and aggrandisement of power in the 
Executive of the Nation, in the President and Heads of Department, is to 
go on, what will our boasted freedom from tyranny be worth ! Is this a 
speciuicn of your vaunted '■'■democracy,'''' Sir, that allows a Head of Depart- 
ment to select a Court Marshal to try an officer; and then, if the verdict 
does not happen to suit that self sufficient Head of Department, to order the 
finding of one that v/ill ? Why go through the solenm mockery of a 
Court Martial, at ail, if the judgment of the Head of Department that con- 
venes it, and not that of the Court, is to be finall}' rendered ? 

But to its honor and justice be it spoken, this state of things does not ex- 
ist in the Military Department of the Government, Allow me to direct 
your attention Sir, to the case of Lieut. Don Carlos Buell, of the 3d In- 
fantry. [Senate Documents, 2Sth Con. 1st session, 2 vol.] Mr. Buell was 
tried by a Court Martial at Jefferson Barracks, in June, 1843, upon a charge 
of unojficcrlike conduct, in striking a Private with a sword, was found not 
guilty and honorably acquitted. This decision did not meet the wishes of 
the Connnanding General, who ordered the Court to re-assemble for the 
purpose of reconsidering its decision, and to show upon what authority of 
laio or orders it justifietl the accused in taking from the guard house and 
striking with his sicord a soldier! The Court did re-assemble, and after 
a careful re-examination of its proceedings adhered to its former decis- 
ion. In its defence it said, that the Rules and Articles of War no where 
gave authority to cmy ojjicer to demand from a Court Martial reasons for its 
decisions, still less to dictate what its decisions " must be," in any case.. 
The defence continues : " In the remaiks with which the case of Lieuten- 
ant Buell is returned for reconsideration to the Court, the Court is required , 
first, to state the grounds of its decision ; and, secondly, it is informed that 
' it must be the duty of the Court ' to pronounce a different one. Such a 
course seems clearly at variance with the whole intent and meaning of Ar- 
ticle 72d, above referred to; (requiring the youngest officer of the Court 
to give his vote first, to protect Courts Martial against the influence of rank 



8 

and to secure decisions unbiassed by the fear of displeasing superiors in au- 
thority) and, indeed, to destroy the very existence of tlie Court as an inde- 
pendent tribunal, acting under the sacred responsibility of an oath. " 

Strong attempts were made by the Commanding General to induce this 
Cotut to revise and cbange its sentence — but without success. The blandish- 
ments of power and the fear of displeasing sujieriors in authority, combined, 
had no efiect upon the officers composing the Court, who felt that they had 
done their duty under the sanctity of an oath! 

Sir, this number of the series of papers I design addressing to you is long- 
er^than I intended it to be. In my next, I shall refer to sundry statements 
in your Report recently transmitted to Congress, which are not true, and 
therefore calculated, if not designed, to mislead tlie publice mind. I shall 
also refer to your wholesale crusade against the old lighting Commodores, 
who are yet hale and able-bodied, the Pursers, and officers of the Marine 
Corps, and perhaps hint at some of the reasons, which have impelled you 
to assume such a position towaids them. The manner, and for what ser- 
vice, you have retained, or salaried, certain clerks in the Navy Depart- 
ment, and dismissed certain other clerks, as well as sundry operations in the 
matter of contracts, will be duly noticed. Meantime a voire saute. 

NORTHAMPTON. 



[ No. 3. ] 



Sir : My inclination prompts and my leisure permits me to again address 
you. And in the outset of this number you must consent to be once more re- 
minded of the time when you, as a rabid Whig, denounced the Administration 
of Andreav JacivSon in stronger terms, perhaps, than I use in denouncing 
the head of one of the Departments of the present Administration. These 
old reminiscences may ruffle your equanimity of temper a liule, but what 
of it? Tliey will serve to show others what you Itcwe been! It is said 
that yoiu" fiiend, President PolKj when a candidate on the stump for Gfover- 
nor of Tennessee, used to take 'great delight in exhibiting to his audience 
a bundle of papers, and exclaiming as he would open them and look witli 
a terrible grin at his competitor, " Old (Jocumcnts are danger-mis things!'' 

Sir, in an old document called the " Northampton Courier" and dat,ed in 
October, 1832, you may find an account of the proceedings of a Whig County 
Convention at Northampton, Massachusetts, at which you and others where 
appointed delegates to attend the Whig State Convention which was held at 
Worcester the 11th of October, 1832. The following is an extract from that 
old document! After giving an account of the first proceedings of the Con- 
vention, the paper says : 

"Judge Newcomb, the Hon. Isaac C. Bates, and George Bancroft, 
Esq., gave elocpient and dignified expositions of the rotteness -and corruption 
of the present (Jackson's) Administration, and of the importance of invio- 
late laivs arid the pure administration of government.'' 

You attended tlie State Convention aforesaid as a Whig delegate, and 
was placed on a Committee to draft an Address to the Whigs of Massachu- 
setts. The Address was drafted, receiving the unanimous sanction of the 
Committee and of the Convention. A copy of that Address lies before me. 



it is a very able aiid a very bitter jxiper against the then existing Adminis- 
tration. Who drew it up? Will you be kind enough, Sir, to lay your hand 
upon your heart and in sincerily exclaim, " Thou cans't not say 1 did it!" 
If you did not actually draw up the AdtUess, you assented to it — you gave 
it your approbation I 

Sir, I have before me your recent Report upon the condition and affairs 
of the Navy. It is an off-hand paper; off-hand in style — off-hand in state- 
ments, whether true or untrue — off-hand in schemes — and off-liand in pre- 
sumption, in the matter of promoting young officers, who iuay have " friends 
at court," or may be political favorites, over the heads of older ones, and of 
placing the gallant old Commodores, who " have done the State some ser- 
vice," and who are yet hale and vigorous, upon half-pay ! 

Let you have your way. Sir, in advancing what you style '' merit" over 
" seniority," and how many oificers would find promotion who were not as- " 
certained to be ultra politicians— Locofocos — brawling friends of the Admin- 
istration ? Is it not enough that the civil offices of the loliole people should 
all be given to men of your partij^ but you must carry your Jacobin prin- 
•ciples so far as to lug the ollicers of the Army and Navy into the same mis- 
erable condition? Are you not satisfied with the control of that power 
which manages to give almost all new appointments in the Navy to politi- 
cal partisans, friends or relatives, but you must seek to break down the rule 
that respects "seniority," in the matter of promotions, so that you may place 
those whose political " merit " you may admire, or whose friends you wish 
to serve, over the heads of older officers, no matter how high their " merit," 
who may have the misfortune to be without "friends at court," or worse 
than that, to be Whigs in sentiment ! 

Sir, if your recommendation weie to obtain, what hope of promotion 
would ever glow in and animate the bosom of an officer, known to enter- 
tain Whig predelictions? To what a miserable state of sycophancy — ab- 
ject sycopJiancy and toadyisjn— would such a doctrine lead ! Are you not 
already nauseated with the manufactured bows, smiles, smirks and praises 
that constantly salute your eyes and ears from those who are hunting civil 
offices as rewards for partisan services? Or, upon the principle tl.iat"like 
begets like," do you esteem a practice which you have observed towards 
others, in days gone by, commendable in those who now, for a similar ob- 
ject, observe it towards you? Is your love for the "system" so strong, on 
account of your success in practising it, that you must needs make an effort 
to introduce it into the Navy ? Heaven protect the meritorious, independent 
and high-minded officer, who has " no friends at court, " when such an in- 
iquitous system shall be introduced into the service ! 

But, Sir, another branch of your falsely styled reform in the' naval service, 
scarcely less reprehensible than the one just alluded to, is the proposition 
to put the oldest officers, those whom you style Commodores — though our Re- 
publican laws confer upon them no such title — upon furlough, or half pay? 
And you propose this — propose to cut down the salaries of such gallant old 
officers as Stewart, Downs, Warrington, Jones, Morris, Crane, 
RiDGELY, Ballard, Shubrick, and the like — as a grand step in economy'} 
And while saving in this way a few thousands, how large a sum would you 
squander w^on favorites as agents Or contractors, in matters relating to live 
oak timber, water rotted hemp, Loper's steam propellers, &c., «fec. ! 

Sir, the services of those old officers, whom yov. wotdd put upon half-pa^^ 



10 

are clear to ihe American people. The services they rendered in every battle 
lliey were engaged in, during tlielast war, to say nothing of what they may do 
in wars that may yet come upon us, could not be computed in dollars and 
cents. What would be tlieir full salaries, were they to live to be a century 
old, in comparison with their glorious services at a time when their country- 
needed such brave and gallant spirits? And you, Sir, who never saw a battle 
on ocean or on land, and probably never will see one, would coin those servi- 
ces by way of saving the half of the salaries of the noble old officers who 
rendered them ! What sort of patriotism, of national pride and generosity 
does such cold, calculating, niggardly conduct exhibit? No wonder you 
are exceedingly unpopular with all brave and generous-minded officers io 
the Navy ! 

Sir, the man who attempts to play the demagogue before the people, or 
any particular section of the people, maij bring exposure and ridicule upon 
himself, if he fails to act his part adroitly. You gave place in your report to 
the highly important fact that you had appointed Captain Rousseau — " the 
first Captain ever selected from west of the Alleghany Mountains" for the 
same service — to the command of a squadron! This announcement, com-- 
ing before the nation in an annual report from the Secretary of the Navy 
for the information of Congress, tells on its face the reason why it was made. 
You desired to gain credit with the rising people of the mighty West! But, 
Sir, have you not attempted to deceive them? Why did you not inform; 
them that there are but tieo Captains in the Navy from west of the Alle- 
ghany Mountains — Rousseau and Armstrong — and that the latter had had 
the command of a squadron in the Pacific, having succeeded to it on the 
death of Commodore Dallas ! You will find " honesty the best policy" 
even in making up an anrnial report. Yes, Sir, and truth also should not 
be lost sight of, if you would have your report a reliable one ! In your attack 
on the Marine Corps, in the report referred to, do you not state that " of thi?^- 
teen Captains, but one is at sea ; and oi forty Lieutenants, about seveii are at 
sea!" Sir, do you not know that there were at the time two Captains and 
nineteen Lieutenants of this Corps at sea? Why this attack upon, and why 
these misstatements in relation to, the Marine Corps ? I ask, Sir, is there no 
personal feeling in the matter? Has not one of the field officers of the corps 
crossed your path in the way of some dismissal or appointment? 

Sir, you attack the Pursers in the Navy : allow me to ask if the attack does 
not grow out of the personal difficulty you have had with Pursers Buchanan 
and Todd? What was your conduct towards the former gentleman ? Was 
it respectful? Was it commendable? A jury of his countrymen, at Phila- 
delphia, passed upon his case and allowed him the amount that he had just- 
ly claimed. Did this satisfy you? No! it gave you as little pleasure as did 
the^r*^ verdict of the seco?irf Court Martial which you ordered to ti-y Captain 
Yoorhees! And what was your bearing towards Purser Buchanan after the 
jury in question had rendered a verdict in his favor ? Was it gentlemanly 
or otherwise when you coarsely and rudely informed him that you would 
take the case up to the Supreme Court ? 

Sir, J will approve of your every laudible endeavor to reform whatever 
abuses there may exist in the corps of Pursers ; but the work must be done 
in at least a tolorably decent manner. Petulence, instability and tomfoolery 
must constitute no part of the operation. Did you not, in October last, pe- 
iemptorily direct a Purser to have his accounts made out withm sixty days, 



11 

• 

and after he had by great industry complied with the mandate and called on 
you to direct that the Auditor (who had refused to attend to the matter until 
next Spring) should audit the same, did you not say to him in a petulent, 
nervous manner, and a sort of cockney, devil-may-care style, " Oh I canH 
he bothered in this way : I have no control over the Auditor : ctpplij to the 
Secretary of the Treasury 9^' And is it out of such materials as these, Sir, 
that you bring before Congress the charge of delay against the Pursers in 
the Navy, in the matter of settling their accounts? 

Sir, let me draw your attention to some of your arrangements of die clerk- 
ships in the Navy Department. And to begin, let me ask if you have not 
for months allowed a person to draw a salary of $100 per month out of the 
public treasury for services wholly rendered in copying your history, or attend- 
ing to your private matters? 

What was your course of conduct towards Mr. McBlair, who had been 
but a short time a clerk, in Commodore Crane's Bureau, in the Navy De- 
partment? He was a faithful clerk, with a family to provide for, and Com- 
modore Crane was attached to him, and desired that he should be retained 
in olhce. But what cared you for the clerk's faithfulness or the wishes of 
Commodore Crane in regard to him? You wanted his place for apartizan 
friend, and therefore yon direteil your Chief Clerk to dismiss him, because 
he entertained Whig predeliction! The Chief Clerk did as he was direct- 
ed, and dismissed Mr. McBlair the 31st July last. Mr. McBlair directly 
sought an interview with you, and at last obtained if at your private dwel- 
ling. In that interview you treated him with such a degree of boorishness 
and incivility, ejaculating every now and then, while he was respectfully 
laying his case before you, '■'■Oh I dont want to continue this conversation^'' 
that he felt compelled to rebuke such " insolence of office" by warning you 
that a day of retribution would cqmel What step, Sir, did you thereupon 
take ? The next day you addressed the following official note to Commo- 
dore Crane : 

"Navy Department, August 1, 1S45. 

Sir : — The conduct of Mr. McBlair, a clerk in your Bureau, was yester- 
day of so outrageous a character that I am compelled to direct you to dismiss 
him from the service of the Department. 

Respectfully yours, 

GEORGE BANCROFT." 

Now, Sir, TRUTH is a jewel even in a modern Secretary of the Navy. 
When you penned this note to Commodore Crane, you knew that you had, 
the day previous to the conduct of Mr. McBlair to which it refers, directed 
your Chief Clerk to dismiss him, which duty he performed! You knew 
that Mr. McBlair's "outrageous conduct," which so much offended your 
official dignity, was the effect of his dismissal, followed by your supercili- 
ous manner at the interview referred to, and not the cause of that dismissal! 
Why then did you attempt, by a manufactured statement void of truth, to 
impose upon the honest and confiding Commodore? The act was a 
mean one. 

Sir, what was your conduct in relation to Mr. Ludlow, a clerk in Com- 
modore Shubrick's Bureau? On the 20th of June you appointed Mr. Lud- 
low to a permanent clerkship, and forty days thereafter you removed him- — 
because he entertained Whig predelictions! And when Commodore Shu- 
brick, incensed at such trilling conduct requested of you the leasous fox the 



12 

• 

removal of Mr. Ludlow, did you not inform him that it was the President's 
and not your work ? Sir, the President declares that he does not interfere 
at all in the matter of removing' or appointing clerks in the Departments. 
By your answer to Commodore Shubrick's inquiry, you raise a question of 
veracity between yourself and the President. Let those settle it who can ! 

One more case. Sir. It is that of Mr. Randall who was a Messenger, with 
your pledge that he should in a short time have a clerkship, in the Navy 
Department, as he was a man of respectable ability and character. Instead 
of promoting him, in compliance with your promise, you preferred ordering 
him, rather than one of the negro men within your call, to go to a stable 
and saddle and bridle a horse for you to ride ! He felt the insult, and re- 
signed his place, 

Another evidence of your love for Tylerism may as well be here recorded. 
Messrs. Dove and Coburn contracted with your worthy predecessor. Judge 
Mason, to build a wall around the new Depot of Charts, or Observatory. 
Owing to some change, subsequendy made in the grade of tlie street, extra 
"work had to be done by the contractors, Judge Mason gave them an order to 
do it, with the understanding that said extra work should be paid for at such val- 
uation as disinterested persons might place upon it. You, Sir, succeeded Judge 
Mason, and visited the work in question in the full panoply of your official 
dignity. After examining it cursorily did you not with an exquisite's sneer 
and simper say, to Mr. Dove, " This is some of Tyler''s patronage ! it 
must he stopped!^'' Mr. Dove refused to stop the work, unless you gave 
him a wriUen order to do so— which order you gave, and the work was stop- 
ped accordingly. But the new Secretary of the Navy, an old hand at turn- 
ing summersets, soon found occasion to wheel to the right-about— in the 
way of exhibiting his power and showing Patch's maxim ilhistrated, " that 
some things can be done as well as others" — and to offer the sum of f 5940 
to the contractors to resume and finish the work! Did they not accede to 
the offer, on condition that they should not again be stopped ? Did they 
not commence, and were they not again stopped by your order, and kept 
some twenty days doing nothing, with stone masons at ,fi2 per day each on 
their hands ? Did you not, after the lapse of weeks, again change your mind, 
and direct the contractors to go on and finish the woilc? Atrd after it was 
finished, and tire Government charged with the lost time which you caused, 
so that the bill amounted to o,l)out ,'^1^8000, did you not refuse to pay one 
dime over tire $5940 which you agreed to give, and let the contractors go 
on without interruption and finish the work? By this master-stroke of 
economy^ no doubt you flatter yourself that you have saved the Govern- 
ment the amount which Mr. Dove felt that he would be obliged to raise, by- 
mortgaging his ])roperty, in order to pay his workmen! 

Sir, a friend has sent to me a copy of the Boston Coiiricr, a pretended 
Whig journal, the editor of which has seen fit to make use of some pretty 
strong langunge against the writer of these mmrbers, for " pouring out 
columns of wrath" irpon yom- head, and to defend your " literary reputation," 
which he says is dear to him, "and should be dear to every American." This 
writer himself happens to have known something of the editor of dre Boston 
Courier in years by-gone. I remember tire time v/hen he published the Bos- 
ton Galaxy, and was prosecuted for a libel upon the Rev. John Newland 
Mafiitt, and convicted! I think your modern friend, Beirjamin F. Hallett, 
(who, if he cannot obtain the Boston Custom House, may be willing to succeed 



13 

Com. Shubrick as the head of one of the Bureaus in your Department,) 
iielped conduct the prosecution. I remember tiie time when the same ed- 
itor, professing to belong to the National Repubhcan party in Massachusetts, 
took great dehght, in the campaign of 1824, in crying down the prospects 
of Mr. Adams and taunting that gentleman's friends with intimations that 
General Jackson would be elected ! I remember the time, in 1831-2-3, 
when he constandy interfered in the Congressional election in the Essex 
North District of Massachusetts, and opposed the Hon. Caleb Cushing, who 
belonged to his own paity, with a rancor and venom unparalleled in the annals 
of party warfare, iintil Mr. Cushing declined being longer a candidate, and, 
under liis own signature, in the Newhuryport Herald^ gave the editor of the 
Courier a series of the severest epistolary lashings, perhaps, that were ever 
inflicted upon the conductor of a newspaper ! And I remember, too, the effect 
of those lashings! ,1 remember that from that time forward the editor of 
the Courier had nothing but praise and adulation in his paper about Caleb 
Cushing ! I remember when the same editor, two or three years back, pro- 
fessing to be a Whig, did all that he could to induce a very distinguished 
statesman to go otf from the Whigs, with as many of the party as would 
follow, in favor of commercial treaties of reciprocity, and other Tylerian ex- 
periments. That great statesman, however, was too wise to take the leap! 
But I do not remember when the editor of the Boston Courier ever render- 
ed service to the political party to which he professed to belong ! Do you^ 
Sir 9 I am willing that you shoidd have the benefit of such a champion's 
defence! He admits your political short-comings, but contends that you 
were obliged to change, in your history, what you had written in favor of 
the Rhode Island Charter, in ord<^r to prevent " a gross perversion of his- 
torical and well-known fact." His logic in the matter is beneath notice, 
and I pass it by. 

Sir, I am not conscious of having assailed your " literary reputation." I 
believe I admitted your scholarship — that you were emphatically " a man of 
books," and I gave you credit for the honorable and praiseworthy manner 
in which you commenced so laborious and responsible a work as that of 
your history of the United States. But if I now present a specimen of your 
paucity of ideas, you may thank for it, the champion of your " literary re- 
putation " who edits the Boston Courier! 

At the close of the 3d volume of your " history" you introduce the early 
career of Washington as follows. Speaking of the Treaty of Peace be- 
tween England and France at Aix la Chappelle, you say : 

"At the very time of the Congress of Aix la Chappelle, the woods of 
Virginia sheltered the youthfid George Washington, the son of a widow, 
born by the side of the Potomac, beneath the roof of a Westmoreland farmer, 
almost from infancy his lot had been the lot of an orphan. No academy 
had welcomed him to its shades, no college crowned him with its honors j 
to read, to write, to cipher— these had been his degrees in knowledge. 

And now, at sixteen years of age, in quest of an honest maintenance, 
encountering intolerable toil, — cheered onward by being able to write to 
a school-boy friend, 'Dear Richard, a doubloon is my constant gain every 
day and sometimes six pistoles,' ' himself his own cook, having no spit but 
a forked stick, no plate but a large chip,' roaming over spurs of the AUegha- 
nies and along the banks of the Shenandoah ; alive to nature, and some^ 
times ' spending the best of the day in admiring the trees and the richnesg 



14 

of the land among skin-clad savages with their scalps and rattles, or un- 
couth emigrants ' that would never speak English ' rarely sleeping in a bed ; 
holding a bearskin a splendid couch ; glad of a resting place foi the night 
upon a little hay, straw or fodder, and often camping in the forests, where 
the place nearest the fire was a happy luxury ; — this stripling surveyor in 
the woods, with no companion but his unlettered associates, and no imple- 
ments of science but his compass and chain, contrasted strangely with the 
imperial magnificence of the Congress of Aix la Chappelle. And yef God 
had selected, not Kaunitz, nor Newcastle, not a monarch of the House of 
Hapsburg, nor of Hanover, but the Virginia stripling, to give an impulse to 
human alfairs, and as far as events can depend on an individual, had placed 
the rights and the destinies of countless millions in the keeping of the wi- 
dow's son." 

This is all very prettily said. Sir. It is full of such poetical garnishing 
as an experienced prose writer, — never designed for a poet, could put toge- 
ther, bjj an effort^ with such a noble theme as that of the early career of the 
great and good Washington, in connection with the stirring times of that 
memorable period in the history of nations ! But, Sir, after the same style 
and fashion, in your Oration, delivered in Washington, the 27th of June last, 
you described the early career of Jackson. I copy from that Oration as 
ibllows : 

" South Carolina gave a birth-place to Andrew Jackson. On its remote 
frontier, far up on the forest-clad banks of the Catawba, in a region where 
the settlers were just beginning to cluster, his eye first saw the light. There 
his infancy sported in the ancient forests, and his mind was nursed to freedom 
by their influence. He was the youngest son of an Irish emigrant, of Scottish 
origin, who, two years after the great war of Frederic of Prussia, fled to 
America for relief from indigence and oppression. His birth was in 1767, 
at a time when the people of our land were but a body of dependent colon- 
ists, scarcely more than two millions in number, scattered along an immense 
coast, with no army, or navy, or union ; and exposed to the attempts of Eng- 
land to control America by the aid of military force. His boyhood grew 
up in the midst of the contest with Great Britain. The first great political 
truth that reached his heart, was that all men are free and equal ; the first 
great fact that beamed on his understanding, was his country's independence. 

"The strife, as it increased, came near the shades of his own upland re- 
sidence. As a boy of thirteen, he witnessed the scenes of horror that accom- 
pany civil wm' ; and when but a year older, with an elder brother, he should- 
,€red his musket, and went forth to strike a blow for his country." 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

" Behold, then, our orphan hero, sternly earnest, consecrated to humanity 
from childhood by sorrow, having neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor 
■surviving brother, so young and yet so solitary, and therefore bound the 
more closely to collective man — behold him elect for his lotto go forth and 
^assist in laying the foundations of society in the great valley of the Mississippi. 

"At the very time when Washington Vv'as pledging his own and future gene- 
rations to the support of the popular institutions which were to be the light 
.of the human race — at the time when the institutions of the Old World were 
rocking to their centre, and tbe mighty fabric diat had come down from the 
middle ages was falling in — the adventurous Jackson, in the radiant glory 
and boundless hope and confident intrepidity of twenty-one, plunged into 



15 

the wilderness, crossed tlie grent mountain-barrier that divides the western 
waters from tlie Atlantic, followed the paths of the early hunters and fugitives, 
and, not content with the nearer neighborhood to his parent State, went 
still further and further to the west, till he found his home in the most beau- 
tiful region on the Cumberland. There, from the first, he was recognised 
as the great pioneer : under his courage, the coming emigrants were sure to 
find a shield. " 

Sir, where two subjects of eulogy w^ere so essentially unlike each other, it 
is difficult to perceive how a man of real genius, addicted at all to original 
thought, could consent to have a sameness of description, of metaphor, and 
of deduction, run through all that he laboriously had written of lx)th ! I doubt 
not, if you were to wnite an enconium upon Mr. Polk, it would be very 
much in the same strain, with musical variations, as those I have extracted. 

Sir, I once knew a fiddler who could play but one tune, with variations. 
He played that one, however, very prettily. It sounded well, the first time. 
The fiddler was a very dandyfied, self-conceited person and seemed to be- 
heve that he could play any thing in the department of music, for when asked 
if he could play some tune the interrogator would name, he would reply 
" oh, certainly," and strike ofi' into the "Soldier's Joy," with variations, that 
everlasting tune, which he alone could play. 

Submitting the fiddler's case for your study w^hen you next indite an eu- 
logy, Sir, I close this paper with a recommendation in a language with whicb 
you are familiar: Saj)ientem pascere barbam. 

NORTHAMPTON, 



'* 



S9 fii 



™ • 






^ <J^. " O M ' 




















N O 









Si 







^ eianfvl. 











iiir 




\i[l}i''','<u>-IV 




L 



mriiiiMiiiiilii 





HHitifitihUlitUi 



:iiir"* 



'lil<i«fli)ftJffifL^lt!>im<4fl 1 



